America has lost its way in the world

August 29, 2008

There can be no hope of a peaceful planet with the US so belligerent.

AT THE end of the Cold War the United States was supreme and unchallenged,
Russia was in decay, poor, disorganised, with ill-equipped military forces. At
that time, many people believed the 21st century might have been the time for
the human race to advance issues of decency, to establish a more permanent,
international peace and really to see that relations between states would be
governed by law and not by power. Instead, we have a period of tragic and
serious mistakes, a period of prejudice and of refusal to learn from history.

America's leadership was critical to the establishment of the United Nations
and to the establishment of a rules-based international system that would outlaw
war unless necessary for self defence or sanctioned by the Security Council.

After the end of the Cold War, America could have done so much to continue
the advance to an even more effective, rules-based system where law governed
relations between states. Instead, today's America has pushed these high
aspirations and noble principles aside and led us, step by step, to a point of
crisis.

What went wrong?

After the Cold War, the neo-conservatives sought to cement American
supremacy. Their underlying philosophy was to enshrine American power throughout
this century and beyond, to recast the rest of the world in America's image, if
necessary by force of arms. The neo-conservatives did not want the restraint of
international agreements, of law or of organisation. To them, September 11,
2001, was an opportunity to free America from those restraints.

As a consequence, the United States has made mistake after mistake and made
the world a more dangerous place.

The first mistake was to declare war on terrorists, as opposed to recognising
that the problem was really one of intelligence, good policing, supported, as
necessary, by military action.

The second mistake was to say to the world, you are with us or you are
against us. There was no middle path.

The third, more serious, mistake, was not to put adequate resources into
tracking down and eliminating al-Qaeda's leadership and destroying its network.

The fourth mistake was to declare an illegal war on Iraq, a massive diversion
that has caused only disaster and made peace in the Middle East even more
difficult.

The next mistake was not to divert adequate attention to the problems between
Israel and Palestinians, to seek to divide Palestinians. Ignoring Hamas makes
peace virtually impossible.

In another mistake beginning at the end of 2001, the Administration plotted,
step by step to bypass the Geneva Convention, the torture convention, to free
America to act as it wanted. The people participating, lawyers, politicians,
bureaucrats are arguably guilty of serious war crimes.

The next mistake was to place obligations on president Pervez Musharraf that
no Pakistani leader would be able to deliver. Fundamentalists have been
strengthened in the North-West Territories. Pakistan is almost in a state of
chaos.

Even more important than these serious errors was failure to deal with Russia
from a sense of respect and recognition of Russia's traditional interests, which
Russia would seek to protect.

It was the US that wished to push NATO to the boundaries of Russia, ignoring
the fact that NATO's real job had been done. America wanted NATO to include
Ukraine and Georgia.

President George Bush tore up international treaties, the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. His actions have, in fact,
begun a new arms race.

Over Georgia, the US and the West, with rare exceptions, have ignored the
trigger that began the fighting and the still-continuing problems. President
Mikheil Saakashvili, who moved his troops into Ossetia, allegedly killing 2000
civilians within a matter of hours, broke an uneasy peace that had prevailed
since the early 1990s.

America's rhetoric and American diplomacy, America's rearmament of Georgia's
military forces, encouraged Saakashvili into believing he had American support.
My opposition to this conflict is as strong as was my opposition to the war in
Iraq.

We need a world in which international institutions are respected, where the
Security Council can have real influence and where relations between states will
be governed by the law and not by force of arms.

Europe needs to think long and hard about the development of its relations
with Russia.

Sadly, the unthinking pursuit of American dominance without any real
consideration of longer term consequences of actions has destroyed the
reputation America had built up in the several decades after WWII.

If America is to exercise effective world leadership, it must recognise that
doing it by force of arms is no longer practical or possible, it must be by wise
diplomacy, by using and strengthening international structures, specially the
Security Council and the International Criminal Court.

We need to re-engage the best of America, the America that in the immediate
postwar years did so much to establish a law-based system to govern relations
between states. Resuming that mantle can give America real influence and the
rest of us the best hope for a peaceful world.